gardening quickie

tonight's major accomplishment is almost getting together the kiddie bench i got at kerr drugs. it's roughly 2/3 the size of a regular bench and should hold sylvia and laric nicely, which is good because only one of them can sit in the kiddie resin chair at a time. luckily, laric is such a gentleman that he will sit in it briefly and then indicate when it is sylvia's turn. still, the bench will be unbearably cute and appears to be very sturdy for it's modest price. it is made of cast iron and wood and the back has a 'safari' design consisting of only slightly mutated african animals and trees.

note: posting delayed by a day due to either semagic or lj lameness.

writing progress?

I found out that i did not win the contest that i entered on a whim. however, i did get to the semi-finalist stage which is good enough to make me feel something, but i'm not sure if it's accomplishment. i got a nifty invite to the MFA program and ncstate which would be lovely if i had a bachelors. back to the grindstone. after all the commotion of the texas trip, i am finally reestablishing the nightly writing habit. last night i just did some sharpening of a few poems, but today i *might* have come up with something new. *shrug* i'm beginning to get to the point where i'm sure what i'm writing is poetry, but have no gauge of whether it can effect those beyond myself. in any case, here it is, discreetly behind a cut.

( Silversides )

current vague list of goals:
find part time job for next few months (possibly real estate related)
find full time job & full time daycare (argh)
enroll in appraiser classes, pass exams etc.
get myself apprenticed to an appraiser
enroll in ncstate
get bachelors in english
become world famous poet while doing appraisals in the spring, summer and fall and taxes in the winter.

query

Q: when is writing slacking off from writing?
A: when you're supposed to be writing poetry and are instead pondering in your journal.

but i have ponderings to ponder, and thus i will share them with my devoted followers fellow slackers. tax season is coming to an end and while i've had a lot of fun, it's time to start looking forwards. HRB requires 30 hrs of continuing education and there are a few major prereq courses that i should be eyeing, but... the office supervisor and a good part of my fellow tax preparers are trying to get me to take the EA course, and i'm seriously considering it. EA = Enrolled Agent, aka can represent a taxpayer before the IRS. that's the technical definition, but there's a lot of general bennies to the certification. it would be nice. i'm not sure that i'm quite ready for it, but one of the preparers who has taken the test said that it really is a matter of study books/take test and i'm good at that.

the real dilemma is that i still *should* take the more basic courses. however, the only course schedule that has been released has the ETR (Everyone's Tax Return) course in frigging garner. it was bad enough when i was required to go to garner a handful of times for training, but this would be 2 nights a week for 6 weeks. no way in hell. if they teach it later in the year, maybe. but right now, the home front needs a bit more tending to. i pick up laric at lunch time, so i end up a small lunch a bit early. i usually go to work around 2-4pm, so i eat a small dinner and then when i get home around 9:30-10, i have some kind of make up meal which has been picking up something on the way home the past few nights. it's not good in any sense and i'd like to have a bit of at home dinner time for a while. that and some simultaneous h_postmortemus and sylvia time wouldn't be too bad either.

this is why i had pretty much decided that the early run of classes was not for me. however, a cow-orker pointed out a fact which i had somehow missed, as i was not intending to take the EA prep course. while it is a 36 hr course, it's only 1 day a week and it's at my absolute closest tax office (3 min away) and with the teacher who is renowned to be hands-down the absolute best. the downside - it goes from may to mid-august. the continuing courses only run till september when they all get shut down to teach the basic tax course. what this means is that if i'm to take the courses that i should be taking, i'd probably end up with classes 3 days a week and that's not going to happen. what i *think* i'm going to do is sign up for and take as much of the EA prep course as i can, and then when the ETR etc courses for the later part of the year get posted, just start skipping class a whole bunch. theoretically, there's no real downside as the course fee is a flat $30 for all of the courses i might want to take and the EA prep course has no final, as the EA exam stands in pretty darn well for that. hmm... much pondering to do.

p.s. this does not even contemplate courses for the whole appraiser thingy. although.... if i could fit that all into fall semester... ah, yes and then i'll enroll at NC State in the spring and see if i can start getting that second half of the bachelors knocked out, while working a part/full time job and doing taxes!

*blelblelbbelbleblebllee*